When Malachi Witmer stormed across the finish line in 17:47 for a fourth-place finish in the Class C Boys Cross Country State Championship at Cony High School Saturday, he didn’t have to wait long for his teammates to pile in.
Thirteen seconds later, there was Brayden Drake, putting the final touches on what his coach called the “performance of a lifetime.” Another 13 seconds, then Wyatt Quint crossed the line. Four seconds, Nathan Brady. Nine seconds, James Brady.
All five scoring runners for the Shires finished in the top 18. South champion Winthrop only had three. Reigning state champ Orono had one.
There was no last-minute drama. The results were clear cut. By an 18-point margin, the combined team of Houlton and Greater Houlton Christian Academy was state champion.
It is Houlton’s first cross country title in more than 70 years.
Houlton/GHCA had carried expectations all season long. The Shires were ranked as a top-five team in the state, regardless of class, the entire fall. At one point they rose as high as No. 2 statewide. They won race after race this season, beat eventual Class A champion Hampden on the state meet course, and won both the Penobscot Valley Conference and Northern Maine Regional titles.
From the outside, a state championship became the assumption. But it still felt good for the Shires.
“It’s overwhelming,” head coach Chris Rines said Monday. “It’s a tidal wave of emotion and just an incredible feeling to know that they did it.”
Brady, a senior, thanked both his teammates and God after the win.
“I did cry a little bit,” Brady said.
The last time Houlton won a state cross country championship, the Maine Principal’s Association had not yet begun keeping record of its champions.
There’s almost no online trace of the 1953 team, or the 1939, 1937, 1935, 1933, 1932 and 1931 teams — all of whom won state championships. The 1932 team, under the guidance of Maine Running Hall of Famer Clyde Stinson, won a national championship in New Jersey.
Most of those accomplishments are only recognized on a small trophy in a case near the front office of Houlton High School that the team only discovered recently.
In the more than seven decades between state championships, the program has waxed and waned. It found success in some years, and faded out of existence in others. There was no Houlton cross country team for most of the 2000s until Rines restarted it in 2013. It’s been a gradual build since.
In 2018, Houlton combined with GHCA, a school less than a mile away with an enrollment below 100 but a strong cross country presence. Five of the six runners on this year’s championship team attend GHCA. It’s been a “happy marriage,” Rines said.
He had recently been working on a video project that pulled in interviews and clips of past Houlton runners. Saturday’s win tied the team’s recent history all together.
“All those voices were fresh in my mind, and seeing the group of guys cross the finish line, it’s like instantly you remember some of those older kids,” Rines said. “All their efforts in the past, it’s all been honored today.”
The Shires were able to bring home the Class C crown, like in all their other wins this season, through supreme depth and pack running.
All five scoring runners finished within 40 seconds of each other. Houlton/GHCA’s sixth runner, Logan Witmer, finished 23rd in 18:44, just 17 seconds behind.
In previous races, like the Northern Maine regional, the entire team crossed the finish line in succession. A deeper state championship field split up the Shires, but not enough to shake up the scoreboard.
“You could have first place and second place, but if you don’t get anybody to compliment that, you’re quickly adding points on the other side of wherever that pack falls,” Rines said. “It works very well for us because our boys do match up very well together… they’re running here at practice and they’re together and you see them at a meet and it’s them together.”
The team still has one race left on its plate: the New England Championships this Saturday at Thetford Academy in Vermont alongside five other Maine schools: Yarmouth, Hampden, Portland, Freeport and Camden Hills, plus a handful of individual athletes that finished in the top-25 regardless of class.
And after that? James Brady is the team’s only senior. Plus there are fast runners coming up through the middle school ranks, Rines said.
That means this Houlton/GHCA team is not going anywhere.
